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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

I hadn’t heard from him since he went off to college at the South Dakota School of Mimes.

I thought it was because he’d stopped talking, but there was another reason.

I paid my respects to him, family members, friends and loved ones buried in a rural cemetery with their locations marked by gravestones showing expiration dates.

A cemetery is any large burial ground, while a graveyard is next to a church, although the words are used interchangeably.

I miss the dearly departed and talk to them at their resting places. I recommend you do the same. They’re good listeners.

I thought of a fellow I’d interviewed years ago. He’d moved to this country from Ireland as a young man. When I talked to him, he was over 100. I went to his birthday party. He played the piano and sang “Happy Birthday” to himself. He played well, as he had more fingers than thumbs. We talked about the usual things that might have helped him reach that great age. He’d only smoked a cigar when a friend had a baby. He’d never married. He was a moderate drinker who told me he liked a drop of Irish whiskey (he favored Jameson). I figured it’d have been a nightcap, but when he had a nip, he had it at breakfast because he didn’t know if he’d be around at bedtime.

I don’t advocate whiskey for breakfast, but I do believe we should never take a day for granted.

It isn’t easy to live a century. As a kid, we play baseball on hot days. We often drank water out of a sun-warmed plastic hose. The warm water had a rubbery taste. Kool-Aid would have been healthier.

We don’t seek the advice of medical professionals as often as we should. Our excuse is that we don’t need to see a doctor because the problem hasn’t gotten any worse. Getting better is too much to expect. That’s the Minnesota way.

I sniff food to check its freshness and its friendliness. I used to sniff roses until I sucked a bee up my nose. I bolt my food before it goes bad, and then I devour it quickly later before it goes worse, and I’m willing to pinch my nose to do so.

I’ve eaten museum-quality cheese by carving the blue or green mold from the cheddar that I’d purchased during the Carter administration. It didn’t go bad. It went worse.

Does ignoring the expiration date on food have an impact on the expiration date on a tombstone? I hope not. The expiration date label indicates the last date on which the manufacturer guarantees the product’s safety and quality. After that date has passed, the product may be unsafe to eat and should be thrown out. The use-by or best-by dates indicate the date by which the manufacturer recommends using the product for optimal quality and freshness. Unlike expiration dates, use-by or best-by dates aren’t safety dates, and products can often be consumed safely after those dates have passed, as long as they’ve been stored properly.

Cemeteries are filled with memories of those I knew and with birdsongs. Cemeteries frequently offer good bird habitat. I watched a robin feed a fledgling. Another visitor to the cemetery told me she had placed a baby bird back in a nest and worried that her scent on the baby might cause the mother to reject it. It’s a myth that parent birds abandon young that humans have touched.

They might abandon in response to disturbance or repeated intrusions. Our parents told us that so we’d stop bothering the nestlings.

My parents told me not to walk on the graves. It wasn’t a superstition. It was a show of respect. If I did, I should apologize. And who knows, maybe the “Hey, you kids, get off my lawn” grouchy guy had become the “Hey, you kids, get off my grave” grouchy guy and would yell at me.

Birders keep a life list of birds they’ve seen. I am blessed by a life list of wonderful humans I’ve known.

A visit to a cemetery keeps me humble by reminding me that nothing lasts forever except a Twinkie.

Take no one for granted.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.